The deep scar down the centre of Björk’s chest on the cover says plenty about the highly personal, painful content of Vulnicura. It is the hole through which her heart was torn out, through which all the pain and anguish…
Album | Björk – Vulnicura
Category: Reviews
Album | Justin Townes Earle – Absent Fathers
Coming only a few months later, Absent Fathers is the flip side to Earle’s last record Single Mothers. Consider it a double album released in two parts. It’s a cracker as well, running in at just over half an hour.…
Album | Natalie Prass – Natalie Prass
High hopes were held for this debut from Natalie Prass. The first songs we heard hinted at something of great potential and wonder, inspiring a sense of nostalgia for past music (as seems to be becoming a trend for Spacebomb…
Album | Gaz Coombes – Matador
Two years after the 2010 demise of his band Supergrass, Gaz Coombes brought us his debut Here Come The Bombs, a record which moved into his own head space in a way that was never really possible with Supergrass, while…
Album | The Decemberists – What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World
The Decemberists might be pushed to beat their own mid-00s output, but this is a band that has stayed true to their roots and continue to make compelling folk music. Their new record comes exactly four years since The King…
Album | Diagrams – Chromatics
Diagrams is the latest project of Sam Genders, previously of Tunng, but for me Chromatics is sharper and more interesting than Tunng’s more diffuse work. ‘Phantom Power’ starts out jaunty, gently articulate, all Belle-&-Sebastian-eqsue, rattling along like a red bicycle with a bell…
EP | Los Campesinos! – A Los Campesinos! Christmas
Los Campesinos! are a band that can do no wrong. Since the release of ‘Hold on Now, Youngster’, way back in 2007, the band has gone on to make four further LPs, and a smattering of EPs released through bi-annual…
Album | Beans on Toast – The Grand Scheme of Things
Beans on Toast can be an acquired taste. I don’t mean the light lunchtime snack – most of us have enjoyed that since childhood – but the singer-songwriter. His lo-fi folky ramblings come with pretty basic vocal stylings, an overwhelmingly…
Album | Cariad Harmon – Cariad Harmon
English-born with a Welsh name (Cariad means ‘love’), and living in Brooklyn. It provides an eclectic background which is clear to hear in Cariad Harmon’s excellent self-titled effort. Before we get to Harmon’s warm, expressive voice, her supreme guitar work…
Album | Jim Noir – Finnish Line
Two years between albums tends to be a perfectly reasonable turnaround for most artists, but for Jim Noir it feels like an unnecessarily long delay. After all this is the man who released 13, yes that’s right 13, EP’s during…